For 43 years, there was just one James Tiberius Kirk, and his name was William Shatner — or perhaps it’s the other way around. It was hard to tell, mostly for Shatner.

Other characters came along to fill the gaps between stints in the captain’s chair — men named T.J. Hooker and Denny Crane chief among them, and that TV pitchman for discount travel. But those were just parts and paychecks. Jim Kirk was anything but.

“I’ve had Captain Kirk use my life,” Shatner said when we spoke in 2002. “I’ve taken what’s happened in my life and tried to have ideal solutions. He does more heroic things.”

But then, in 2009’s Star Trek do-over, along came Chris Pine — the sleek new model strutting around the blindingly bright bridge of the Enterprise. Meet the new Kirk, nothing like the old Kirk, even after the old Spock shows up and tells him to stop whining. He’s simmered down a bit in the new Trek offering, this week’s Star Trek Into Darkness, but he’s still a good five-year mission away from being anything like his predecessor.

Shatner insisted when we spoke this week, hours before the opening of Into Darkness, that he never really begrudged another actor the Captain Kirk role. Sure, he would have liked to be in the first reboot movie, alongside Leonard Nimoy, but as he reminds: He doesn’t own the name. That’s the property of Paramount Pictures.

“One time, I wanted to name a show How Captain Kirk Changed the World,” said Shatner, who will speak and sign autographs at the Irving Convention Center on Saturday during Dallas Comic-Con. “They said, ‘No, you can’t use Captain Kirk.’ So we went with How William Shatner Changed the World, and it was a little embarrassing. I don’t have a territorial thing about Captain Kirk.”

After a brief pause, he reconsidered: “In a dim, emotional way, I think it’s too bad this young, handsome guy is being called Captain Kirk as well. But it doesn’t enter my consciousness.”

Shatner was just here in March, at the Dallas Convention Center, for a Texas Lottery event. For the record, despite that infamous 1986 Saturday Night Live sketch in which he implored the convention-going crowd to “Get a life,” Shatner enjoys fan fests. He’s even written a book and made a documentary on folks who show up dressed like Klingons, Vulcans and a certain starship captain.

“You know what they’re doing here?” he said. “They’re having fun. And that’s why they go to the conventions. … I used to think they came to see the actors.” He discovered they actually come to see each other, and to revel in the dream of a perfect future marred only by the occasional attack from familiar foes.

“The people of Star Trek have taken the mythology of Star Trek as reality, as potential reality, as something to strive for,” he says. “The external part — the autographs, the wardrobe — that’s part of the ritual.”

For some, of course, Trek is a religion; for others, a lifestyle. Is Shatner comfortable with that?

“I’m not, because I’m the object of their attention, and it makes me a little uncomfortable,” he says with a laugh. “But I understand it because of the confusion of where are we, who are we, what are we doing, what does it all mean. And since there are no answers, they have got, if not an answer, then a deeper understanding of the question.”

Plan your life

Dallas Comic-Con runs through Sunday at the Irving Convention Center, 500 W. Las Colinas Blvd. William Shatner will speak at 4 p.m. Saturday. For tickets and more information, visit scifiexpo.com.

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